What sales response time is best when following up web leads?

Chart of the day: Website lead response management research

If you're involved in a business where you collect leads from your website you will know the importance of timing - 'timing is everything'. For example, for a financial services or travel company who offer brochures for download, phone follow-up is still often an effective technique if the profile of the lead fits. Of course, within B2B marketing, this approach is even more common when offering whitepapers to help prospects learn about a product or solution.

Today's chart-of-the-day isn't as recent as most we feature, instead it's a classic study designed to identify what day of week, time of day and time from creation to call back a web-generated lead for optimal contact and qualification rates.

The full report summary gives details on contact times (similar to best mail contact days Wednesday and Thursday are far more effective than other days and surprisingly, 4 to 5PM is best for calling) which we don't look at here. Instead, this pair of charts cover the probability of contacting someone depending on the length of time from when the lead is generated online. The charts show the importance of calling leads as soon as possible, both to gain contact AND to help qualify leads.

The takeaway is to test this within your own sector if you haven't done this analysis recently, since it's likely behaviours have changed since this time and many companies are now encouraging call-back as an alternative. Do let us know if you're aware of any more recent study.

• Source: Lead response management study (2009)
• Methodology:  3 years of data across six companies that generate and respond to web leads, from over fifteen thousand leads and over one hundred thousand call attempts. Unfortunately, company types weren't defined, but the report implies financial services for consumers for mortgages and health insurance.